Mrs Kelly- Wife of a convict mother to outlaws
When Ned Kelly’s mother Ellen arrived in Melbourne in 1841, aged 9, by the time she died aged 91 in 1923, having outlived seven of her twelve children, motor cars had plied the highway near her bush home north of Melbourne.
Like so many pioneering women, Ellen led a life of great hardship. She endured famine and drought, was a mother of seven when her husband died after months in a police cell, saw her babies die, and listened through prison walls. At the same time, her eldest son was hanged, and she saw the charred remains of another of her children who had died in a police shootout with police. One of her sons became Australia’s most infamous outlaw, and another became a decorated policeman and a worldwide star on the rodeo circuit. Through it all, ‘the notorious Mrs Kelly, as she was dubbed, survived as best as she could.
As she struggled to raise her children on inferior farmland, she became notorious for her sometimes-violent temper, resulting in several court appearances. After moving her family into the far northeast of Victoria to stay near relations, she leased 88 acres (35.6 ha) there and sold ‘sly grog’ to make ends meet.
The bushranger Harry Power became a family friend, introducing 14-year-old Ned to the life of a bandit. In 1869 Ellen took a lover, Bill Frost, and became pregnant; he promised marriage. The baby—her ninth—was born in March 1870, but Frost did not keep his word. The trouble with the law increased, with several of Ellen’s siblings and offspring suffering periods of imprisonment.
Late in 1872, with Ned in prison, she met George King, a 23-year-old Californian horse thief, and once more fell pregnant. On 19 February 1874, they married at Benalla with Primitive Methodist forms. She had three children, including King. Alice, the last, was born in April 1878, six months after King abruptly deserted them and only days before Constable Fitzpatrick arrived at the Kelly home to arrest Ellen’s son Dan for horse theft.
Set upon by Ellen (wielding a spade) and probably Ned, Fitzpatrick brought charges of attempted murder; she was sentenced to three years in prison.
A model prisoner, Ellen was allowed, after Dan’s death and Ned’s capture, to visit Ned in the prison hospital and later in the cells, seeing him for the last time on the eve of his execution. According to tradition, she said, ‘Mind you die like a Kelly, son’.
Released in February 1881, Ellen returned home to scenes of incipient civil rebellion; the authorities feared a pro-Kelly uprising. Constable Robert Graham, however, gained her confidence and persuaded her to calm her sympathisers. She settled down to become, for the first time in her life, a respectable community identity—although she could never rise to even modest prosperity.
Image: Ellen Kelly, 1917
State Library of Victoria, H2003.25/5
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